David G Atwill
banner
dgatwill.bsky.social
David G Atwill
@dgatwill.bsky.social
Historian of China and Tibet
Dean of Arts and Sciences, NYU Shanghai
Reposted by David G Atwill
The piece you didn't know you needed to read.
Trump’s Oval Office Is an Interior Designer’s Nightmare
Has he never heard of negative space?
www.thecut.com
April 9, 2025 at 1:28 AM
Reposted by David G Atwill
New digital collection launched: "Muslims in China," features 1,000+ images documenting the lives of Muslims and Christian missionaries in Western China from 1920s-1930s. #Sinology #OpenAccess curiosity.lib.harvard.edu/claude-l-pic...
January 16, 2025 at 8:30 PM
Reposted by David G Atwill
Prof. Tsering Wangmo Dhompa is a poet & author of tremendous range, attentiveness, and power. I'm really excited for her new academic monograph with @columbiaup.bsky.social
New Book 🚨!!

The Politics of Sorrow, by Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, uncovers the story of Amdo and Khampa chieftains and lamas who sought to protect local identities and traditions in exile rather than “embrace demands to shed regional allegiance and embrace national unity” @columbiaup.bsky.social
January 14, 2025 at 6:48 PM
Reposted by David G Atwill
New piece with @sheenagreitens.bsky.social in @foreignpolicy.com on Vietnam and US-China security competition. We argue that this rivalry doesn’t require countries to choose the US or China as sole security partner. That type of bipolarity is Cold War 1.0. (1/2)

foreignpolicy.com/2025/01/13/v...
Vietnam Wants U.S. Help at Sea and Chinese Help at Home
Washington shouldn’t overestimate its influence in Hanoi.
foreignpolicy.com
January 14, 2025 at 4:11 PM
Reposted by David G Atwill
China Books Review has announced two new prizes, for non-fiction & for translated fiction, details here chinabooksreview.com/2025/01/09/p... --honored to be on the non-fiction prize committee along with Andrew Nathan, @isabelh.bsky.social @yangyangcheng.bsky.social & Barbara Demick
Announcing the China Books Prize | China Books Review
A new annual award to celebrate outstanding book-length works on or from China, with shortlists and winners to follow in both nonfiction and translated literature.
chinabooksreview.com
January 9, 2025 at 8:05 PM
Reposted by David G Atwill
Not to be a downer about that “best China books list” (there are some good things on it, for sure), but having a historical range from the late Qing to the 1990s is extremely short-sighted by Chinese standards. Nothing about the late Ming? The Song? The Han?

chinabooksreview.com/2024/12/19/b...
Best China Books of 2024 | China Books Review
Party luminaries. TV chefs. Poetry. Scandal. Our annual round-up of notable titles on or from China, split across nonfiction and translated literature, nominated by a roster of experts.
chinabooksreview.com
December 20, 2024 at 1:22 PM
Reposted by David G Atwill
Finally someone wrote a story about the brains behind the demented (in a good way) Pizza Hut Taiwan offerings! Glad it was @dearclarissa.bsky.social 😅
Every now and then I have a bucket list story that sits in my head for years. This was one of them.

When it comes to developing new pizzas, Pizza Hut Taiwan's main criteria are clear: “How do we appeal to the Taiwanese tastes and how do we make Italians angry?”

www.atlasobscura.com/articles/piz...
https://atlasobscura.com/artic…
December 11, 2024 at 2:58 PM
Reposted by David G Atwill
Tsering Shakya on efforts to push the use of 'Xizang' instead of Tibet: "China’s demand that the international community adopt “Xizang” mirrors colonial practices of renaming territories to assert dominance."
blogs.soas.ac.uk/china-instit...
Tibet Must Stand! - SOAS China Institute
Tsering Shakya comments on cultural imperialism and China's push to rename Tibet and replace it with "Xizang".
blogs.soas.ac.uk
December 11, 2024 at 7:24 PM
If you need another excuse to subscribe to the @MekongReview, @chinarhyming.bsky.social offers one more. Mekong Review remains one of the best and rarest jewel of scholarly and literary writing on Asia.
Subscribe to the excellent @MekongReview & among much amazing content you’ll also get my review of high level DPRK defector Thae Yong-ho’s memoir Passcode to the Third Floor (@ColumbiaUP) - mekongreview.com/subscribe/
December 2, 2024 at 2:01 PM
Great reporting, a heart-warming story, and a reminder of exiles in the modern world.
NEW: On Thanksgiving morning, I learned the Biden administration had carried out a secret plan to get 3 Uyghurs trapped in China to the US on a plane with freed American prisoners. Two sons in VA saw their mom for the first time in 20 years. Here's the story: www.nytimes.com/2024/12/02/u...
Inside a Secret Plan to Bring Uyghurs Trapped in China to the United States
On Thanksgiving eve, U.S. diplomats reunited family members who had not seen each other in years because of China’s harsh policies on the ethnic group.
www.nytimes.com
December 2, 2024 at 1:23 PM
Reposted by David G Atwill
There’s a stunning variety of third-person singular (3sg) pronouns (meaning 'she / he / it' or singular 'they') across Chinese languages and dialects. Here are a few of them:

Mandarin: tā
Cantonese: keoi5
Taiwan Hokkien and Shanghainese: i
Southern Wu: gi, ji

#langsky 🀄️📚

1/
December 1, 2024 at 5:06 AM
Reposted by David G Atwill
As we approach the end of the year, here are some of the highlights from the Sinica Podcast over the last 10 months since rebooting the show in February, following the demise of The China Project about a year ago.

Here's the return episode featuring @goldkorn.bsky.social: art19.com/shows/sinica...
Sinica comes roaring back in the Year of the Dragon: A chat with Jeremy Goldkorn
Sinica is back, and on this first post-China Project show, Kaiser chats with TCP’s ex-editor-in-chief and Sinica’s co-founder and former co-host, Jeremy Goldkorn. They chat about the Beijing that was,...
art19.com
November 27, 2024 at 8:41 PM
Reposted by David G Atwill
OMG 🤢
Would you drink mayonnaise? If so - good news! Lawson will start selling a “drinkable mayonnaise” as a test product in Japan starting 11/26. Enjoy while the rest of us retch in the corner.
November 23, 2024 at 10:53 AM
Reposted by David G Atwill
One of my current projects explores #non-Han #fiction & #poetry.

On the former, I wrote an article for *World #Literature Today*.

I've given talks on the broader project. I'm open to giving more.
🀄📚 www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2022/january...
China’s Minority Fiction, by Sabina Knight
Multiethnic fiction speaks volumes about Chinese attitudes toward minorities, as well as these peoples’ historical understandings, their search for roots, and longings for cultural survival.
www.worldliteraturetoday.org
November 17, 2024 at 11:08 PM
Like an extended footnote on a point you vaguely already knew, @vicshih.bsky.social breaking it down into its component parts. Invaluable.
November 19, 2024 at 11:11 PM
Reposted by David G Atwill
Tomorrow in Sydney! And if interested pls read Tess Gardner on Morrison, Timperley and China via the link below.

"Across the two world wars two Australian former journalists produced propaganda for the Chinese government."

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

www.sl.nsw.gov.au/events/georg...
George Ernest Morrison symposium
In partnership with the National Foundation for Australia–China Relations, this symposium will explore Morrison's personal archive.
www.sl.nsw.gov.au
November 19, 2024 at 10:39 PM
Reposted by David G Atwill
Welcome to check out this valuable Chinese collection of interviews with leading scholars, mostly in different China fields.《学术之路:跨学科国际学者对谈集》(2023年商务印书馆) "Pathways of Scholarship: Reflective and Methodological Conversations with Int'l Scholars in Humanities and Social Sciences" (2023).
November 17, 2024 at 6:53 PM
Reposted by David G Atwill
It's publication day! The Politics of Language Oppression sheds light on a global crisis of linguistic diversity that will see at least half of the world's languages disappear this century.

Use 09BCARD for a 30% discount from @cornellupress.bsky.social www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501...
November 15, 2024 at 1:52 AM
Reposted by David G Atwill
Every issue of Mekong Review covers a range of countries and subjects from across Asia, but sometimes motifs emerge. In our latest issue, writers returned time and again to thoughts of memory, fragments and identity.

Check out our August 2024 issue here: mekongreview.com/cat...
August 19, 2024 at 12:00 AM
Such a treasure with some of the best writing, poetry, and reviews on all things “Greater SE Asia” and beyond — well worth at 50% off or full price! @mekongreview.bsky.social
I have a code for 50% off a year’s subscription to Mekong Review which I will happily give the first person who DMs me. Lots of great writing on a wide variety of topics relating to Asia.
The Uyghurs: Kashgar Before the Catastrophe and Under the Mulberry Tree: A Contemporary Uyghur Anthology are testament to the power of memory as resistance against crackdown and erasure.

Read Sophie Beach's review of these two books here: mekongreview.com/mem...
August 18, 2024 at 1:30 PM
Reposted by David G Atwill
Also: hello new followers! I love the growth of the Bluesky community.

If you're wondering what this is, every Sunday(ish) I post a collection of links & thoughts from the past week. I read pretty broadly and try my best not to make it too self-indulgent. I hope you find something in there for you.
I am wandering ALL OVER this week—lots of China stories, as always, plus dispatches from Brazil, Indonesia, Russia, Bangladesh, Cuba, Ukraine, Gaza, Vietnam, Alabama, and American presidential politics. Plus two audio recs on Chinese dissidents in exile.
Weekly Wanderings: August 18, 2024
Recommendations China Stories Jude Blanchette, “China Is in Denial About the War in Ukraine” Keith Bradsher, “How China Built Tech Prowess: Chemistry Classes and Research Labs” Tang spent eight years ...
mauracunningham.org
August 18, 2024 at 12:32 PM